Chairman Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid said on Thursday the third income distribution was an increase of 0.10 sen per unit compared with 6.50 sen per unit announced last year.

He said the income distribution will involve a total payment of RM459.86mil, an increase of 49.1%, compared with the previous year’s total payment of RM308.40mil.

“A total of 336,411 unitholders, who currently held 8.02 billion units of AS1M, will benefit from the payout,” he said when announcing the income distribution.

Ahmad Sarji said that as at Sept 25, AS1M has recorded a gross income of RM577.4mil.

He said profit from share sales contributed RM158.1mil or 27.4% while the remaining RM101mil or 17.5% is derived from investments in short-term instruments and other income.

“Dividend income from investee companies contributed RM318.3mil or 55.1% of the gross income,” he said.

He said all income distribution will be automatically credited into unitholders’ accounts on Oct 1.

Calculation of the AS1M income distribution will be based on the average monthly minimum balance held throughout the financial year of the fund, he added.

AS1M is a fixed price fund with a size of 10 billion units with 50% of the approved size is open for Bumiputera investors, 30% is allocated to Chinese, 15% for Indians and the rest for other Malaysians. – Bernama

Malaysian investors are a lucky lot today: there are a lot more investment options when compared to 20 years ago. These include unit trusts, direct stock investment, private businesses, futures, options, commodities, precious metals and of course, the old faithful, properties.

While having more options is good, it can also confuse the average investor. He has only so much money but all of the aforementioned investments appear to be good. So which one shall he choose? The people selling the investments are all saying that theirs is the best, and lo and behold, they can even prove it with facts and figures. “Invest with us, and all your dreams will come true!” This being the case, it is perhaps no surprise that many investors are at a loss on where to put their money.

Let me now shine a little light into the subject matter, which may help you to make better investment decisions.

Firstly, I must admit that I often cringe when I hear individuals wanting to try out forex (ditto applies to futures, options and commodities). While it is not rocket science, forex is certainly more complicated than buying and selling properties. I’ll throw in some terms so you’ll get a taste of the action: bid, ask, spread and pips (no, I’m not kidding – pips is short for Percentage In Point). If you don’t know what these four words mean, may I suggest you to look elsewhere to invest your money?

But here we have individuals who cannot make money from properties – perhaps the easiest way to make money – wanting to try out forex. As you can see, something is not right with that statement. If they cannot make money fromproperties, what makes them think they are going to make money from forex, a significantly more sophisticated instrument? (That ought to set your alarm bells ringing already. Any time the seller uses the word ‘instrument’ instead of calling it plain old investment; he’s telling you that you need to have a double PhD to make money from it!)

This is not much different from a guy who is losing at checkers who now wants to try his luck playing chess – against grandmasters! While he may win once in a blue moon, the obvious result is that he will lose most, if not all, of the time.

Furthermore, how many people you know have made money from forex? My guess is none. Don’t worry; you’re not the only one. I don’t know of a single individual who has made money on a consistent basis from forex. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who made money from forex – period!

But I do know of some big corporations, organizations and in fact, a certain country in South East Asia (clue: the country’s name begins with the letter M) that nearly went bankrupt because of currency trading! Imagine, if a country with millions of bright intelligent people can go bankrupt because of currency trading, what chance does the individual investor have?

Of course the people promoting forex will make it sound so simple. Learn a system, work the system, maintain your discipline, and you will make money from forex. Easy peasy.

But then I can also tell you how to win at chess. In fact, it’s so easy. All you need to do is to conquer the opponent’s queen, and you will win.

That is the theory. However, to do it in real life is not so easy.

And by the way, this is not an attack on forex, futures, options or commodities. What I’m saying is that these instruments (that word again!) require a lot from the investor. So much so that they will wind up losing most of the time. The odds are against them.

This being the case, why go against the wind? Why not invest where it is easier to make money, and property certainly fits the bill here. While property investment is certainly not perfect – no investment is – it has many advantages over many other investments.

Firstly, it is significantly easier to learn the winning strategies in property investment. It is not too difficult to make money from properties. While I’m not saying that you will be raking in the big bucks just because you invested in properties, your chances of making money is a lot higher here than most other investments. As long as you do your homework, you should be able to make money from it.

One simple strategy is to buy the property the moment the project is launched by the developer. By doing this, you are paying the lowest price (particularly if you get some good discounts). Once the project is completed two years later, you can often sell it at a profit of 20, 30 percent or even higher.

Now while it is a simple strategy, the fact remains that it works! In fact, tens of thousands have made money this way. And because it works, it is certainly one strategy that you should consider adopting, if you have not done so yet.

Furthermore, because it is simple, you don’t have to crack your head trying to discover new formulas or reinvent the wheel. All the formulas are already there; you just need to work on them.

Next, it does not require much time. While you obviously will be inspecting the properties before buying them, you don’t have to be eyeing it every other day. In fact, there were properties that I saw only twice or three times in my life. But that did not stop me from making money from them.

This hands-free concept is another valuable plus point in property investment. I’m sure that like me, you have no big desire of monitoring your investment every single day. What you want to do is concentrate on your work and family, and perhaps look at the investment once in a couple of months or so. In fact, the less time you have to spend on the investment, the better.

Now aren’t these good solid reasons why you should invest in properties? I think the answer is an overwhelming yes.